1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to memory acquisition for conversion of image data, and more particularly to an image forming apparatus and a method of acquiring a memory area.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, one type of image forming apparatus called a “multifunctional product” has been widely recognized. Such an image forming apparatus integrally accommodates various functions such as a facsimile, a printer, a copier and a scanner in one housing. In general, the multifunctional product includes not only a display part, a print part and an image forming part but also four types of applications corresponding to the facsimile, the printer, the copier and the scanner. In this configuration, the multifunctional product can work as the facsimile, the printer, the copier and the scanner by correspondingly switching these applications.
For this reason, the multifunctional product has to be able to handle various formats of image data. In general, a multifunctional product has a conversion function to convert a format of image data into another format. Also, the multifunctional product can compress and decompress image data (such compression and decompression are considered as a kind of conversion in this specification, and are collectively referred to as conversion hereinafter) for the purpose of saving hardware resources thereof.
However, such image data conversion requires a large amount of memory because the image data generally have a large data size. Accordingly, if a multifunctional product cannot reliably acquire a required amount of memory, the multifunctional product cannot convert a format of image data into another suitable format.